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Senn High School Plans TV News Show

Senn High School will be launching a new TV news show this month where Journalism students will work every day to inform their peers about events in and outside the school.

The idea came from Michael Cullinane, Senn’s lead journalism teacher, and Mary Beck the school’s principal.

TVs will be set up in the cafeteria that will display the show, and it will replace the morning announcements the last 7-8 mins of first period. The students will also be airing a new episode daily. The equipment was funded by Loyola’s grant from the McCormick Foundation. The organization grants money to journalism programs all around Chicago at different high schools.

Cullinane wants to make Senn TV a show where everyone can feel comfortable and informed. He also wants to bring all of these stories to life, as engaging the students is essential to him.

“Senn High School is such a diverse place, there’s so many stories that never get reported, so we want to bring those forefront so that we can create a sense of community where we know more about each other,” Cullinane said.

John Slania, Associate Dean of the School of Communication at Loyola University Chicago has also played a very big role in this process. He has connected Loyola and Senn so that the school would get its grant for their equipment. He really believes that the students at Senn have potential which could help them later on in college if they choose to follow journalism.

“With this opportunity, seniors will have a very big advantage when they make it to college because they’re going to have experience with all of this which sets them apart from people who have to start from scratch,” Slania said.

Furthermore the seniors in the Journalism program will be the main leaders of the show, having double periods of Broadcast Journalism 2 every day. The school’s Broadcast Journalism 1 students will also be producing the show, creating packages. Senn Times will also still be publishing articles on the website aside from the show.

Junior Symone Smith, Editor in Chief for the Senn Times, and soon to be anchor for the show, wishes for Senn TV to be a success so that the alumni can connect with it.

“We just want to get the audience involved because we can do the best that we can, but if the audience doesn’t get involved then it doesn’t just work, we are going to work on making this fun,” Smith said.

Kameha Spearman a junior, will also be one of the anchors for Senn TV. She wants to make this possible because she believes students are deprived from knowledge on current events because they don’t find the news interesting. Both Smith and Spearman are looking forward to also advance in journalism to become real journalist..

“Student don’t watch the news a lot which is sad, but we’re going to put a lot of energy into this so that the students won’t miss out on anything,” Spearman said.

Moreover, Josh Nguyen, a sophomore, looks forward to watching the student-led news show. He hopes Senn TV will inspire fellow students to watch the news.

“I’ve never liked watching the news, it’s so boring, so I feel as if students my age were reporting instead, the show will be a great success,” Nguyen said. “I also don’t watch the news because they leave a lot of things out that are essential, but since students are more sincere I’m looking forward to stories that tell the truth to make this interesting.”